Business of Endurance

From Atlantic Rescue to Transforming Endurance Sport: Chris Williams' Journey

• Charlie Reading • Season 9 • Episode 1

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What does it take to reinvent an entire sport? Well, today we sit down with Chris Williams, the commercial leader behind Supertri, the revolutionary triathlon league, shaking up endurance sport From securing game-changing partnerships to creating a team franchise model that financially supports athletes. 

Supertri is on a mission to make triathlon faster, more exciting and more sustainable for pros and fans alike. But Chris's journey goes far beyond boardrooms. He's an endurance athlete himself, and in this episode he shares the jaw-dropping story of his attempted Atlantic row and the dramatic rescue that followed. 

We talk about resilience, risk and bouncing back from failure, as well as what endurance sport can teach us about success in life and business. So if you want to know how the sport is evolving, how to push your limits and how to turn passion into opportunity, this is an episode you can't afford to miss. 


Highlights:

  • Chris’ Unconventional Journey into Sports Business
  • From Rowing the Atlantic to Finding Purpose
  • The Role of Psychology in Leadership and Sales
  • Lessons in Resilience from a Life-Threatening Capsize
  • Anchoring Emotions with "Where Do I Need to Be?"
  • Supertri’s Mission to Modernize Triathlon
  • Creating High-Impact, Short-Course Triathlon Events
  • The Power of Storytelling in Growing the Sport
  • Supertri’s Mixed-Gender Team Franchise Model


Links:
Connect with Chris Williams through LinkedIn.


Please Subscribe to Business of Endurance on Apple Podcasts, leave a comment, and give us a 5-Star review.

This episode was sponsored by The Trusted Team and 4th Discipline

Chris Williams:

having an ability to anchor yourself and to pull yourself out, like I said earlier, from the immediate emotion or the immediate challenge. How do I create the ability to pull myself out of, maybe where I am emotionally and re-identify, reapp, re-appraise where do I need to be right now? I find that to be a really useful practical trigger there.

Charlie Reading:

What does it take to reinvent an entire sport? Well, today we sit down with Chris Williams, the commercial leader behind Supertri, the revolutionary triathlon league, shaking up endurance sport From securing game-changing partnerships to creating a team franchise model that financially supports athletes. Supertri is on a mission to make triathlon faster, more exciting and more sustainable for pros and fans alike. But Chris's journey goes far beyond boardrooms. He's an endurance athlete himself, and in this episode he shares the jaw-dropping story of his attempted Atlantic row and the dramatic rescue that followed. We talk about resilience, risk and bouncing back from failure, as well as what endurance sport can teach us about success in life and business. So if you want to know how the sport is evolving, how to push your limits and how to turn passion into opportunity, this is an episode you can't afford to miss. And, by the way, I always ask about books, but I absolutely love Chris's recommendations on books here, so you've got to stick around to the end to check that out.

Charlie Reading:

Anyway, let's dive into this brilliant episode with Chris Williams from Supertry. Favor, before we dive into today's episode, if you're enjoying Claire and I bringing you amazing guests, not asking you for patronage fees and not jamming the podcast full of adverts, then the best way you can help us continue to do that and to make it even better is to hit that subscribe button, and here's my promise to you when you subscribe, we'll make it our mission, along with the team that supports us, to continue to improve this podcast every week. So thank you so much for your support and for being a part of the Business of Endurance community. Let's dive in.

Charlie Reading:

So, chris, welcome to the Business of End endurance, really looking forward to chatting to you and learning more. You've certainly had an interesting journey through the world of sports so far, and I'd really like to dive into your story a little bit. First, before we sort of start digging into the questions For those people that don't know much about you, can you just explain your sort of journey and how you've arrived at where you've arrived at now from a business point of view?

Chris Williams:

Absolutely, charlie. Thank you very much for having me on. So, yes, gosh, where to start? So, hello everyone. I'm Chris Williams. I am technically the commercial director for Supertri. We are an innovative platform in the sport of triathlon, doing both professional racing but also now, more so, moving into the world of mass participation as well.

Chris Williams:

But my background you know. I've been in sport as a, as a sort of hobbyist and and just a passionate fan since day dot. I'm sport through and through it's. It's always been my passion. But in terms of my career, I sort of have to admit I sort of stumbled into it a little bit right. It was an atypical route into sport because I didn't sort of probably like many. I sort of stumbled into it a little bit right. It was an atypical route into sport because I didn't sort of probably like many.

Chris Williams:

I grew up hoping that my role in sport might be more on the on the participatory side or sort of pursuing it from that perspective, than than on the commercial side. And yeah, I grew up playing sport, cricket, cricket was my number one sort of love and in my early 20s found myself pursuing that as as a career and um, when things were not quite happening in that sense and sort of the pressure of, I suppose, the real world came knocking where you know I didn't have a contract in cricket. They're lined up for me. I just spent the last two winters over in Australia as a player coach over there and I was starting to dawn on me that, look, maybe it is time to kind of get a proper job and, and you know, give up on this. And you know you look back on those moments where maybe that's another version of a podcast somewhere in another universe, where you know I tell a story about how I pushed through that. But I didn't on this occasion.

Chris Williams:

And uh, anyway, I went and started my um sort of professional career in in corporate sales in London and I have to say it was the first time in my life where I really felt like I was not aligned with sort of like a really strong purpose. I just I'd gone into something that was what I should do rather than what I really wanted to do and had a genuine desire for, and I quickly took action on that. I knew it deep down, even though I felt like I could potentially be quite good at maybe this, this path that I was on, I decided, look, this is not the future that I want for myself, and, um, at that point I didn't really know what I did want to do, though, so what I did was I stepped back and took on a pretty sort of audacious challenge in my own personal life. Myself and a good friend. We decided we were going to try and row across the Atlantic Ocean. There was no real kind of priors to that. It wasn't that I was, you know, especially good at rowing or done a load of this sort of stuff. It was just a big challenge that I thought was going to pull me forwards, and, and that was actually my route into, into sport or partnerships, really, because going on that journey exposed me to, yeah, the realities of starting a team like that, starting to raise sponsorship and actually sort of from a sort of charitable fundraising perspective initially, and as I went through that journey, it was pretty much a two-year project to get to the start line of that, and, yeah, I picked up a load of relationships and skills that actually, I realized might lend themselves to a career in sport on the on the business side. So when I came out the other side of that challenge, I was fortunate to see there was an opportunity with Southampton Football Club. I managed to get myself in there as managing sponsorships. A lot of that was really trying to find the new, the right new partners for Southampton Football Club there in the Premier League back in 2017-18 and those few years beyond that and from there I've continued on that path. In sport I've you know, I think you come out of. If you look at where I was with Southampton, it's very sort of commercial world of the Premier League and football.

Chris Williams:

My next stop was actually at British Cycling, which is much more sort of if you look at the commercial and then the social impact being sort of two ends of the spectrum. British cycling was certainly pulling myself back towards that. That social impact side. Being an organization, they're responsible for sort of everything from the grassroots right up to the elite, and I really enjoyed my time there. It was a challenging time for British cycling over recent years and for the sport, but actually a hell of a lot of good work going on there and I can see that organization certainly sort of moving in the right direction. Now and just over a year ago I joined Supertron and, yeah, here I head up all of our commercial function, which is really about how do we grow as an organization. So it's a very exciting brief and I'm sure we're going to discuss it further now.

Charlie Reading:

Brilliant, and I understand that you've got a background in psychology. So how has your background in psychology helped you in each of those different business paths?

Chris Williams:

Yeah, well, I didn't necessarily have an especially strong background in psychology until recently. It was more just an interest and I think, um, you know, what I had realized is, in every area of my life, psychology and the themes that I was sort of learning and and curious about around psychology just kept showing up, whether I'm talking about, maybe, my personal relationships, my job in sales at the time and actually understanding the role of influence and how do you actually connect with people, leadership was which I believe is so deeply connected to an understanding of psychology and the different motivations of people and so on. So, yeah, it was more that it just kept showing up everywhere in my life and I've been showing an interest, I've been curious and then, I suppose back when COVID struck, I decided to take the leap back into education. I went back and did a master's in psychology and decided that I'd I felt like I was sort of trying to attach leaves to a tree that I hadn't put roots down for when I was doing all my learning in this space of psychology. So I decided to go and, you know, go deep and actually get a bit more of an understanding of the science of psychology. And, yeah, it's now sort of something that I'm very pleased that I've done and how that you ask the question how's this, you know, come through in what you do?

Chris Williams:

I think it's a very the benefits are largely individual, right. I think there's a lot of what you realize when you come through sort of studying psychology, that maybe a lot of the most practical benefits of psychology could be defined as common sense, right, that's not to say it's common practice, but I think when you realize the sorts of things that I find to be valuable from it is, you know, it's things like influence and how do you influence people? Often, coming back to really understanding people's motivations and and thinking a little bit more differently and deeply about the way you connect with other people. That's something that I've definitely, I say, tried to approach with both external relationships with with other businesses and as well as within our teams. And then, I think, one of the other things that you've seen given you've asked it, what do I think is the most prevalent ways that it shows up?

Chris Williams:

But I do believe that you know having the ability to sort of distance yourselves and this will probably be a theme in the conversation distance yourself slightly, slightly from the emotion and actually try and create space between emotion and decision, or emotion and communication, is definitely one of the things that I think is most impactful from all of that journey. So, yeah, that's something that I'd have to say. You still get caught out all the time. Just because I'm a qualified psychologist doesn't mean I practice everything perfectly, but I do think it gives me a posture towards the world which I hope is productive and helps in a number of different ways.

Claire Fudge:

It's brilliant to hear your journey of kind of wanting to go back and learn again. You know kind of that inquiring mind and I think you know you touched on it there. There's so many aspects to having some education in psychology that actually you may not apply everything to yourself every day but actually it does help from a business perspective that you actually just mentioned just now in terms of this big challenge of rowing across the Atlantic with your, with your friends, because from my understanding there were some huge challenges there that psychologically certainly would be very demanding. You also mentioned there about, like it, pulling you forward, so I just wondered if you could tell us, you know, about what happened on that row, maybe some of those psychological tactics that you used and what you mean by sort of pulling you forward. What is it that you were looking for or needed for wanting?

Chris Williams:

I have to say that I have apologized in advance. I'm not sure there's a short version of this story. I've been searching for it for sore bloke seven, eight years now. Um, yeah, so I'll try the short version.

Chris Williams:

So, yes, max and I uh, a guy called Max Thorpe, an incredible individual himself, and I took on the challenge to try and row across the Atlantic Ocean. This is a 3,000 mile voyage in a seven meter long boat from the Canary Islands, so just off the south coast of Spain, over to the Caribbean, being, um, typically, it's going to take you 40 to 90 days. It's completely self-sufficient, so you have to take all your own food and everything that you're going to consume within, uh, that that duration has to be on board that vessel. Or, you know, you're treating seawater to make sure you can drink that, etc. Etc. And um, and bear in mind, you know, all of our training had pretty much been done just off the south coast of the uk, here in and, and certainly had no prior background in extreme ocean sports, so it was a bit of a baptism of fire. We got out there into the ocean back in December 2017. And, yes, quickly, we're thrown into some of the most extreme conditions you can imagine. Over the course of the first week we had these progressing and building storm conditions that each day we were thinking, gosh, surely this has got to get better soon. And actually each day it was progressively getting more extreme, more intense, more intense. We now since learned that these are the most intense conditions that this race had seen in over a decade. And on the ninth day we came to a bit of a crunch. We were we're actually going amazingly well, we're about a thousand miles in to this journey and we were about a hundred miles. A crunch. We were we're actually going amazingly well, we're about a thousand miles in to this journey and we were about 100 miles ahead of the, the next nearest pair in in the race. There's these 27 teams back then competing to try and row across the ocean, and we were comfortably ahead of the world record pace. So we were doing amazingly well.

Chris Williams:

It was all going sort of perfectly to plan, and then we were caught by this what we call a rogue wave, which is a wave that kind of sits completely outside of the, the normal conditions, and it came from um side on beam on to our boat, picked us up, um, threw us up in the air and slammed us back uh, essentially exercising a full cap size, right. So what happens then is we're both overboard. We uh managed to come up above the water. We're still tethered to our boat. Our boat righted itself and we pulled ourselves back on board, thinking, look, everything's going to be okay. We kind of tidy up things and we'll basically need to get into the, the cabin here, call in and let them know look, we're all good, because once you get submerged, your boat sends a signal back to land to say, look, this boat's in trouble. And we were going to call in and say we're not in trouble, all okay, successfully negotiated a capsize, we're good to go.

Chris Williams:

When we opened the cabin hatch, we were hit with this smoke. Our boat was on fire, and so what would happen? In the force of this capsize? The two batteries that we're using to power our navigation equipment, our desalinator, the sorts of things that you need in order to to be able to do this sort of thing they'd cracked and they were now burning through the contents of our cabin. So we now, in between waves of rummaging around, trying to find a satellite phone in order to call in and explain what happened. So I'll try and fast forward a bit here. Essentially, we had one satellite phone with one bar of signal and we weren't able to get back into our cabin from there on. We called in and we were informed that you know this, this is an immediate rescue requirement. You guys don't have any option. We're going to have to send someone to rescue you. Hold tight, we'll be with you as soon as you can.

Chris Williams:

And then what happened was about eight hours of fighting the waves on deck. For the next eight hours and when I talk about fighting waves we're talking about 40 foot walls of water were coming at us multiple times a minute. It was some of the most extreme conditions that you could possibly imagine. And then, as it got dark, we decided we're going to get ourselves in our storage cabin, which is a space about the size of a suitcase, and two of us got in there and started to take shelter in there, because we could no longer see where the waves were coming from and we felt like we were incredibly vulnerable.

Chris Williams:

Out on deck. We were checking the horizon every 30 minutes or so and we were sort of putting around a laser flare to just help that if anybody's coming, they'll be able to hopefully see this and come and essentially help us and rescue us, and it took until about 3 am in the morning. So we've been going for about 17, 18 hours since we'd made that call and we see these lights coming towards us and what was coming towards us. We sort of already breathed this sigh of relief, but we shouldn't have done. We had an incredibly hectic rescue operation with a 250 meter long, 110 000 ton oil tanker, um, which was was very much unprepared for the situation that we were. We were in so um, a very hairy rescue experience later, which, which involved teeth being wrenched from my mouth and, um, my teammate max, falling back down into the ocean below and and being saved by a trailing rope out the back of the tanker, and we were finally pulled back on board this oil tanker, which then spent the next three weeks taking us to Brazil before we finally were able to head home and see our families again.

Chris Williams:

So, yeah, it was an incredibly extreme experience and I felt like it's probably worth me shining light on that because it might give you an inkling as to kind of like what took me back into this world of psychology when I reflect on a lot of the moments in that story and there's so many that kind of required resilience. What I found profound was actually how natural it felt to do the right thing in those conditions. It's not that I was especially sort of superhuman. Yes, we were well prepared and I felt like we were a good team, and I do believe those things are incredibly important.

Chris Williams:

But when it comes down to how do you handle stress and how do you deal with that extreme level of pressure and uncertainty and fear when there's no one watching and when there's no other option, it felt almost natural to do that, and actually it did feel natural to do that.

Chris Williams:

And what I find to be most interesting about that is that obviously we're exposed to things far less stressful and far less concerning on the day-to-day basis and it's really hard sometimes to enter into that state of clarity and to be able to execute everything in the way that you want to right.

Chris Williams:

And so that was what really fascinated me from a psychological point of view is okay, how do you find it almost easy and natural in the most extreme, almost worst nightmare conditions and then you can return to a normal environment and sometimes not be able to tap into that same level of clarity of thought or focus and yeah, I think that's a really interesting um insight from my experience is that it's not that all of a sudden these things are that much harder and they require that much more resilience. It's actually just. I think it reminds you that we are resilient. We are actually really resilient almost automatically, as it's wired into us. We want to survive, we want to do well, we want to achieve things. It's often that we've unlearned it and, through lack of exposure, other voices or other emotions have become more prominent or more of our automatic state. So I can't remember if that's answered the starting question, but hopefully it's given you something to jump off.

Charlie Reading:

It's brilliant, and I suppose I mean you've answered a lot of my follower questions, because I think there's a lot of learning from that experience. I mean it must have been frightening as well. But the last follow-up question that stood out to me was when you are stressed at work or at home, what process do you find with the benefit of that learning? What process do you find yourself going through to try and kind of, as you say, deal with something that's actually far less serious than you experienced on that boat?

Chris Williams:

well, I think. I think this is where it comes back to me saying common sense, not common practice, right? I think we know the lessons from my story. When max and I are sometimes invited to talk to people about our story, we're very conscious not to shoehorn lessons into the experience we had. Both max and I actually took huge different lessons ourselves from it. But actually I tend to find that when I ask people, what do you take from that, they actually have conclusions which are reinforcing things that we know to be true.

Chris Williams:

And the thing, to be honest, that I've learned and this isn't my wording, actually, it's something that just resonates with my experience is having an ability to anchor yourself and to pull yourself out, like I said earlier, from the immediate emotion or the immediate challenge and some good. I like to use sort of frameworks to do that, and I can't remember exactly where it came from, but it was from Simon Mundy's podcast and I've actually become good friends with Simon. He was interviewing somebody it was the England hockey coach and I forget the name and he spoke about where am I, where do I need to be, and that's something that I have written on the wall in front of me, right, and it's about how do I create the ability to pull myself out of maybe where I am emotionally and re-identify, reappraise where do need to be right now, especially in a world like where I'm often sitting in this one room going back to back between meetings. How do I take myself out of the previous conversation and prepare myself for the next one? It's the same as how do I in the middle of the Atlantic, when I've just been told that you are no longer going to be able to pursue the objective that you have. Right, you're no longer going to get to Antigua. That dream of you with the flares above your head at the finish line, that's not going to happen, right? That's something that triggered like complete despair.

Chris Williams:

Right, I was ready to kind of break down with overwhelming sadness, but I do remember at the time and I didn't have that anchor in my mind at the time, but I do remember just thinking this is not serving me right now. I looked over at Max, the guy who I was with out there. I looked to my right and there's these unbelievably big waves and I just knew that I can't afford to be upset right now. And it was amazing how, actually, when I go back there. This isn't make-believe, that's just true.

Chris Williams:

There was absolutely no value in that emotion and I was able to, just like that, remove it. And I'm sure that there's many times that we've all felt extreme emotions and we have not felt the ability to remove it, but when my life depended on it, I was able to, and, of course, then you have to come back to that at some point. I have to feel that emotion at some point. But actually being able to pull yourself back to where do I need to be, I find that to be a really useful practical trigger there, charlie, really useful practical trigger there, charlie, about getting you there.

Chris Williams:

The same can be used, and I think this is where I found this lesson to be really impactful. When I first heard someone else talking about it, he was actually talking about coming home from work and the kids don't want stressed dad. When he walked through the door, they need playful dad. And just before the door, he needed to catch himself and make sure that I don't take this version of myself in there. This has to stay here because the people behind that door, they need something different from me and in order to catch, yourself to do that.

Claire Fudge:

Having a trigger or an anchor is a really useful way of doing it.

Claire Fudge:

That's really interesting how you bring that into everyday life as well.

Claire Fudge:

So your example there of coming back from work and having a million things I was also wondering actually, as you were describing that I know you said, and it's really interesting because people take different things from a story and that you don't necessarily want to tell people what they should be learning from your experience but I also wonder like being able to make those decisions in that at that time, at that moment, you know, when you reflect back into kind of everyday life, there's so much noise around making decisions, so many things that whereas I guess in that moment, as you said, you know it's actually about survival and nothing else matters other than that.

Claire Fudge:

So that's what I took from that. So you mentioned right at the very beginning about your recently coming to Supertri and I must admit this is something I didn't know very much about but since watching lots and looking online, this is so exciting in the world of triathlon, like seriously exciting and really fast paced and energetic and engaging. So for those people who don't know about Supertri, could you tell us a little bit about what it is, the format of it. I think that's really exciting as well. And who's it for?

Chris Williams:

You've given it a very good tee up there. To be honest, I think what is Super Try? We are an organization that specializes in short course triathlon and we build it in a way which, hopefully, is going to inspire and entertain like the sport has probably never done before. And I think the business came from three incredibly passionate triathletes who, I think, looked at the sport and thought we love this. But why is it still serving and this is back in 2016-17. Why is it still serving only its sort of niche? And the challenge that it gave itself is how do we make this more entertaining? How do we make it something that more people can be inspired by, more people can engage with, more entertaining, how do we make it something that more people can be inspired by, more people can engage with?

Chris Williams:

And you start to look at the product and you think well, from a participant point of view, I think there's a lot going for it. You've got some brilliant events out there, but actually they are really difficult to put on. There's challenges around putting on triathlon events at scale. I'm sure you and all your listeners will know those but when you think about it from a viewer perspective as well, and from a fan's perspective. You know, watching a multi-hour race, both in person when these are transient races and events, that kind of start here and finish there and maybe you're only going to see a couple of moments out of a seven, eight hour race but also the the thought of sitting down and consuming something for that duration of time it's never going to be something that's going to connect with enough people's motivations to really grow, not in the modern world, I think. You know. You look at things like Tour de France, which have obviously got that history and legacy to it. I think if you created it now like I said earlier in the conversation, I'm a massive cricket fan If you were to build something for the future of cricket now, it wouldn't be test cricket, you know, as much as I wish it was. It would be something more like t20, which is that high impact um made for consumer version that can really connect with uh people in multiple different ways, and so that's what we've tried to do.

Chris Williams:

And and how do we do that? We, we create races uh that happen in short, city center locations. So, um, these are never more than one mile long in terms of the circuit and what we do is we do swim, bike run, swim, bike run, swim, bike run three times through back to back, super short. So there's lots of action. Um, within the format we we create rules of of the, the point system and so on that inspire people to push harder at different points within the race, to create jeopardy and drama at multiple different moments within the race. Trying to be almost gone are the days of a race being a foregone conclusion halfway through or as soon as somebody gets off the bike. If one of the front runners is there at the front, then you almost knew that they're going to head off and win that race.

Chris Williams:

Through mixing up the format, it really challenges the athletes to know a different form of pacing themselves.

Chris Williams:

We know different athletes perform differently in terms of when they've gone straight off the run back into the water to swim again. There's just a load more variables that come into play through that format. The other thing is it's much easier for us to broadcast. By basing it in these single locations, we're able to build a really high quality broadcast on that professional product and that allows us to put it out to to much more uh audience right, so much greater audiences can consume it through both digital content and we've invested massively in that aspect of what we do, as well as through free-to-air broadcast coverage, because these events they're one hour of male racing, one hour of female racing we only need a two and a half hour broadcast slot. It's much more achievable to work with broadcasters to to put that on their channels and get that out there. So, yeah, all of these things align around. Okay, how have we simplified this down into a product that can engage in a single location for a shorter period of time and make it more accessible for fans to to watch?

Charlie Reading:

it sounds like a brilliant innovation in the sport, because I think anything that that draws attention in in terms of attracts eyes in today's society. That's what sports need. You mentioning the tour de france as the analogy I think it was it got me thinking, because my understanding is that the Tour de France viewing of. So I mean, I'm a super keen cyclist. I have never, ever, sat and watched it for a day on Eurosport. I do sometimes watch, and increasingly watch, the highlights, which obviously at the moment are on ITV, but I absolutely love Unchained on Netflix, and Unchained on Netflix has got me watching the highlights more and they even made me think I could almost even sit and watch it for a whole day. Now, and I wonder whether is there any plan for this, because my understanding is that the viewing figures for the Tour de France this year doubled and that's almost certainly on the back of people get understanding that the athletes and the teams threw unchained. Is there any scope to do that to triathlon, because that's what I think it needs.

Chris Williams:

Yeah, I think from being in my seat over the last few years it's almost been sort of Netflix documentary was the answer. What was the question? If you're honest, everybody was out there very off the back of drive to survive. Well, actually it was before that even. I think. You know you saw things like the last dance, the michael jordan documentary, which you know. Just people who had no interest in basketball were getting drawn in and, look, there's more history to it than that.

Chris Williams:

But I think this was a bit of a gear shift in terms of sports, going into that space of of, okay, actually we can reach audiences who really don't care about the sport, or maybe they're peripheral fans, um, but we can drive engagement through the storytelling of the people right and getting under the bonnet and and giving them access like they've never had it before, and that, of course, is useful and actually we've been operating with that insight ever since SuperTri was founded as Super League Triathlon. If you look back at some of the early content that we've created, we were doing this off our own back. Now, of course, it would help to have a distribution partner like Netflix come in and say look, we want to give you that platform and Ardor would very much be open to going down that road, and I think there'll be some amazing stories, uh, to tell, and so, yeah, of course, there'll be an interesting direction to go, I think, in if you look at, okay, what are the tools within our disposal right now? It is about how do we work closer with the athletes, and we've come up with things that we believe add more layers to the story, and and we're in that sort of journey at the moment of how do we bring these through more and how do we create better stories and tell better stories through those.

Chris Williams:

For example, I'm talking about our teams. We're the first really competitive team product in the sport of triathlon and we've developed it with men and women on the same team competing individually, but they're competing as a team towards the same leaderboard, men and women, which I believe is the only professional league where we have that absolute equity in equal amount of men, equal amount of women competing in that way and, look, that's something that we think is really interesting and it's actually how we think it should be. I think a lot of sports, if they were to start again now, would probably develop their structures in that way where the men and women would have their own competitions, but also they would compete in a combined format somewhere along the road. But actually we have the.

Chris Williams:

I suppose that the good, the good facts of you know I've said there, we don't have the legacy and the history of a tour de france. Now, the upside of that is that we don't have any of that historical baggage that you get as a, as a legacy organization that you know, when we see something that we think would improve what we do, we can do it. Uh, and so that's quite liberating and yeah, of course it would make us very sort of well primed, I'd say, for a sort of behind the scenes documentary series that can hopefully reach more people yeah, and you mentioned that the team structure, and my understanding is that you've kind of you know you sold team franchises to you knowises, to the Brownlee brothers and the like.

Charlie Reading:

How does the commercial side of Supertry work?

Chris Williams:

Good question. I think our business model is not all that atypical to others in this space. The key drivers of revenues for our business are we have commercial partnerships, so sponsorship revenue. We have hosts, who are typically local authorities who invest to bring an event like ours for the, for the, both the tourism and the social impact that you can bring through what we do. We have, as you've just said here, the teams, which is definitely something that's that's quite unique and where we probably differ to others, and and then you have participation, right, they're the key revenue drivers.

Chris Williams:

The other stuff is, to be honest, sort of ancillary. You know, things like hospitality, things like merchandise, that sort of stuff at the moment is ancillary. It has the potential to grow if we get things right. But, yeah, teams, how does that sort of function? Well, what we decided was we wanted to build this um proposition in this way and initially we to test it and pilot it. We, we retain those teams internally and we delivered those as a sort of under the super try internal mechanism. Right, but the vision was like, if we can get this right um, we believe it's going to help us grow both, yeah, commercially, but also in terms of getting other people invested in in this um from a uh beyond sort of the direct sort of revenue aspect of it. But actually, how do we get more people and more leverage to reach greater audiences and also to deepen the story that we're having?

Chris Williams:

Like you said here, the british team owned by the brownlee brothers and and their team there that for us, is now potentially a vehicle that can attract investment and attract audience in a different way to what we can do as a league. So we want to create the environment for that team to be successful and allow them the platform to go and, yes, promote young athletes and promote the competitive aspect of what they do, but also to build their own sort of commercial model as well. So they will own some of the assets, they'll own their team assets and it gives them that ability to go and potentially grow the overall pie as well. So what we've done here is we've started that in 2024 with two of those teams continuing to be owned by the league and two of those teams being sort of decentralized, as I say, to external owners, and we're now going through the process of finishing that, go to market and trying to find the right owners for those teams. Now, as you can imagine, it's just as important that you know, in a partnership like that, we get the right owners involved in the teams and make sure that these are sort of setting themselves up for because one of the things we do want to have is continuity with those teams and make sure that there's some long-term thinking behind how we get that to happen.

Chris Williams:

And yeah, there's a lot of nuance within that. When you start thinking about the calendar and that is one of the challenges in triathlon right now is obviously we've got athletes. There's only so many athletes. There's arguably two sets of athletes, some of whom sort of cross over a a little bit, but you have your short course athletes and your long course athletes. There's definitely a few who can do both, but I think it's very hard to do both well at the same time. We will see, but ultimately those those athletes have have only got so many competition days in their bodies each year, and so we're having to make sure that we get our sort right and try and marry it in a way where we're actually helping the overall sport and not fighting against one another.

Claire Fudge:

It's fascinating to hear about how you are creating these teams. Have you got professional athletes that are coming to you saying I want to be part of a team, or are people creating teams and then you're finding the owners for that team? How does it work?

Chris Williams:

Well, it's been a bit of both teams. And then you're finding the owners for that team. How does it work? Well, it's been a bit of both. It's such a novel aspect, really, in terms of its opportunity, that we're having a lot of those sorts of conversations right now with pad athletes interested. We've also approached individuals to see if this is something that they might want to do is it's all of the above, but I think one of the things that for us, makes the most sense is is how do you connect these teams to a bigger story, a bigger picture vision, and that's where the Brownlees obviously have that. This is about a legacy for them and how do you continue to push the sport forwards here in Britain, and that's something that we think could be really powerful over time.

Chris Williams:

Similarly, there's lots of conversations going on in the US at the moment about with the road to LA 2028, there's a lot of aspiration to get men and women on the podium there from the US at the moment about with the road to LA 2028. There's a lot of aspiration to get men and women on the podium there from the US. How do we potentially work with that and and see that as a vision? And you know. Then there's other territories where we're not active in from an events perspective, but we know they're really interested from an audience perspective and maybe they've got great athletes from those regions as well. Where it's, it's in our interest to to try and build a better association with that audience and try and build a bit more close fandom and and connection with the team for the people who are coming out of those markets. So, yeah, there's there's lots of different factors to consider here, and, of course, I think getting either athletes or ambassadors behind some of these teams, people who already have that connection with fans and with the community is something that's really we believe to be a particularly impactful one. Now, what I would argue, though, is that I think it's really important there's a genuine passion behind those people.

Chris Williams:

I do see that there's a lot of this going on at the moment, where you're seeing the Ryan Reynolds effect in Wrexham with the football. I've just seen someone there's loads going on about this at the moment because, as we sit here, at Super Bowl yesterday and, uh, the Wrexham team was basically on an ad for one of his companies that was broadcaster in the Super Bowl, so they reached over. The post basically said they reached over 110 million people yesterday, probably more than, uh, the collective reach of any of the Premier League teams in the US this season and this is Wrexham who previously were in I can't even remember which tier of the English football divisions and so on and that's come through. You know the, the individual who owns your, owns the team and and his platform, but at the same time he is an absolute, rare breed of creative but also super passionate and he's invested himself for in a long-term way with that team.

Chris Williams:

I think just applying that same approach but just dropping a name on top of the team won't necessarily work unless there's genuine passion and long-term commitment from that person. You know we're seeing in some other sports where we're, you know there's, there's definitely kind of the celebrity um endorsement, celebrities are being used to sort of provide that reach vehicle for, for team brands. I think it has to be, it's powerful, but it has to be connected through passion as well. There has to be a genuine connection there and authenticity to it yeah, it's interesting passion behind supporting those people in a team.

Claire Fudge:

Obviously, with with super try, it's a really different compared to what we're used to in terms of approach to triathlon. Over the years the face of triathlon seems to be changing. It's like where do you see triathlon as a sport going? Obviously, super try is going in a an exciting direction, but where do you see triathlon going as a sport?

Chris Williams:

yeah. Well, this is a really interesting question. I think it's. The answer to that question is probably going to change and evolve quite a lot over the last couple of years. If you look at what's going on right now, we've got obviously ourselves. We're trying to make the sport more accessible. That's ultimately what we're trying to do right for fans, but also for participants.

Chris Williams:

I'm not convinced that, given the signals that we're seeing that there's going to be a volume growth, play at ultra long distance, endurance events People are not becoming more time rich, quite the opposite. But I do believe that they are still incredibly powerful experiences. And if I'm to tell you from my background myself, I would certainly see a role for the short course of the sport of triathlon from a training perspective and from an entertainment perspective, but from a sort of setting myself that real vision of okay, what could I achieve? I would certainly think it's one of those you know going into do an Ironman. It's iconic. I do believe it still has an iconicity to it that we're not going to be able to necessarily match through what we do. I think that that's what the sport needs to do well, is it has to have space for both of these things. I think it has to understand the difference between that sort of passionate and deeply entrenched individual who's going to come in and potentially, in time, become a regular ironman athlete but also bring more people in who see, do you know what I want to be? Um, more of an everyday triathlete.

Chris Williams:

I look at sports like what high rocks have done recently. Right, I am I'm not sure how exposed you guys are to it, but from about 2014 so I'd say about 2020 was very into crossfit I I I'm an adopted member of the endurance community. I didn't grow up sort of doing endurance sport I I grew up doing team sports. I started um getting into endurance sport probably around 2013, dabbled with it until more like the last five years where I've really gotten um into it as a massive part of my lifestyle. But crossfit was something that I found to be incredible at um, you know building community around fitness, strength and fitness, training people to move better, etc. Etc. But it wasn't accessible. And Rocks has come along and has become a very accessible format of that where, depending on you know, it doesn't really matter necessarily age. So long as you're able to get through the movements, people can get involved in that thing, and this year they're going to have 630,000 people participating in High Rocks events around the world.

Chris Williams:

Now, if you look at all of the big players in the sport of triathlon at the moment, I don't think we accumulatively from just a pure um.

Chris Williams:

You know, if you look at the major event organizers, who groups those with a portfolio of events, don't think we reach that number globally across the calendar year.

Chris Williams:

Now it's a very fragmented market in the sport of triathlon at the moment and I think to move forward, we are going to need to see some more consolidation around the quality of experience, and hopefully that means organizations like Supertri adding value at the local level, helping event organizers to deliver better events, delivering really high quality experiences for people as well, as in a world where we know that there's going to be a space for others in long formats of our sport to do the same. So, look, it's hard to say for sure where we're going, but I think what I expect is that hopefully, more eyeballs onto the sport can bring in more engagement and more investment. That will allow us to put on better events and to grow the base and to bring more people in at the the ground level, um, rather than make it our mission to sort of bring people in at the pointy end and hope that that's something that's going to grow the sport yeah, I think that's brilliant.

Charlie Reading:

I think you're right. There'll always be a place for that person that wants to uh go off and do a life-changing challenge like and an iron man is that is that. You know, the fact that people get their their the Ironman tattoo is an indication of how big a challenge they see that. But there needs to be a different route into the sport than just people saying I'm going to do an Ironman having never done triathlon before, which is, I suspect, a small minority as well.

Charlie Reading:

As the high rocks thing I was immediately thinking is a really good analogy and a very similar thing in a different side to sport and a very similar thing in a different side to sport. And I can see that a different format of triathlon can provide that fitness and experience that something like high rocks can do through Super Tri. So I think that's really interesting. Explain what you mean by I know you haven't used that term, but the by Super Tri mass partition events, and can you describe what those are like? And if somebody's thinking about doing their first triathlon, why should they look at what you guys are doing as an entry into the sport?

Chris Williams:

yeah. So this is an area which we're really excited about sort of growing and moving more into is, as I said, when we changed from super league triathlon to super try, it was a evolution of our business from becoming uh, from being a? Um, a pure place professional triathlon organization to becoming a triathlon ecosystem where we also deliver mass participation, age group races, um. So by super try, which will be announced probably by the time we uh share this podcast, but um, but we're not shy away from talking about it. This is going to be the, the brand name that sort of speaks of our collective of, of mass participation events and um, we've started out. In the last couple of years, we've brought in some amazing events.

Chris Williams:

So the chicago triathlon, which is over 40 years of history, it's the biggest event in north america and it's a truly incredible event. I was there last summer. That that's one of our by supertri events, and what we're very conscious of and what we mean by the, the sort of by supertri, um, aspect of this is that the chicago triathlon is the chicago triathlon. We're not going to make it the supertri chicago triathlon. That's not what it needs to be. We believe that this still has its own identity and that we want it to still be about that city and about that location, right, but the stamp of Buy Super Try is hopefully going to, in time, be that quality assurance that people know that this is an event that sits as part of a group of events that we know are going to be of the highest quality and that the experience is going to be unparalleled to what you're going to get at other short-course triathlon events. And so, yeah, as I say, short course is what we're going to specialize in charlie.

Chris Williams:

We our area is we want to be putting on events from that sort of super sprint distance. So maybe it's someone's very first touch point with the sport of triathlon. We actually see some of our events. We see over 40 percent of participants being first timers, other events more like 25, but we we have a considerable amount of first-timers doing our events. And so, yeah, distances from Super Sprint to Sprint to Olympic is where we're going to specialize. So, again, that Olympic distance is still a really meaningful amount of work for many people. And when we look at USA, for example, which is the largest participation market when it comes to triathlon, over 70% of the total triathlon participation in the US last year was from Olympic distance and down.

Chris Williams:

I think, if you look at how much of the attention that we probably as a sort of the hyper-engaged aspect of the community, the people speaking on podcasts, the people who are really passionate about triathlon, I'd say that 90% of the conversation typically, other than maybe around the Olympics, historically has been around that long course, but actually it's not where majority of people are participating.

Chris Williams:

So for us it's how do we create an experience at that, at that entry level, that sees more of those people committing more to the sport, more engaged in the sport, uh, investing more interest in the professional aspect of the sport? And so, where we can, what we'll do is we'll put on those by supertri participation races will be accompanied by one of our super tri league events. It won't always be the case, but our super tri league events will certainly be aligned with those by super tri events. And, yeah, we want to create these festivals of triathlon where, um, people can come and watch the best athletes in the world in in a very sort of fan friendly format, but they can also participate in in something that you know might only require an hour or 45 minutes of effort and actually if you join a relay team, it might be even less than that. You can jump in on the day brilliant.

Charlie Reading:

They sound like great fun, but I think anything that brings new people to the sport it has got to be a fantastic thing. So I I think that sounds. That sounds awesome. Now we always like to ask every guest what books have helped them on their journey. So what books have helped you, or books do you find yourself recommending to other people that you think would help them?

Chris Williams:

It's a good question. Do you know what You've teed me up for a story here, charlie? We get our food delivered by Tesco, right? And this young lad came and knocked on the door last week and it must've been about 8 pm in the evening and I open up the door and he's there. He's pretty chuffed. He said this is my last one for the night. I've managed to get through it really quick. I'm meant to be on till 11, but I'm done. I said that's awesome. Okay, what will you do now then? Are you just going to knock off?

Chris Williams:

And he must have been about 18, right, and I remember, just like I was pumped because I was like this has given me sort of faith that you know the 18 year old who's dropped off, he's not just going to go back and just scroll TikTok, he's actually going to go read his book. I was loving this. And he looked in and in my downstairs my bookshelf is there downstairs and he literally peeked his head through the door and said can you recommend me a book? And so you're asking me this question. I'm trying to think what did I recommend him? And actually I recommended him the book which is my favorite book, which is the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, I believe, is how you pronounce his name. It's just the most amazing book about the journey of life and an adventure and embracing and accepting things, and I think you know, if I was to say what book do I recommend people that that, I think, is going to be pretty universally relevant. It's something like that, maybe not that that sort of tactical um in terms of its utility, but it's certainly something that I think um is brilliant for mind. When it comes to some more specific, valuable insights, I really love Matthew Syed's books. I think Rebel Ideas or Black Box Thinking are fantastic in illuminating some of the edge that you can get through reflection and reasoning, and also just his ideas around cognitive diversity and that side of things I think to be really important for making good decisions and making sure that you don't.

Chris Williams:

So, for example, in the sport of triathlon, one of the things that I try and retain is I do try and retain the outsider's perspective. I haven't always been in the sport of triathlon, I haven't always been in endurance sport and I think we can easily convince ourselves of things because we're really passionate about them and work with a lot of passionate people who, of course, see things in a certain way and that is part of what we need to observe, but actually there's so much more information that we need to consider if we're going to make, you know, sound decisions that speak to what I've spoken about here, about growing the sport and appealing to more people's motivations and so on. So those are a few um I I want one more that I will mention because I don't know if this is. We don't often talk about sales, but it's a you know, we're, I think when you, when you work in senior positions in any business, you're in sales, right, because you know, particularly when you're trying to grow, um, it's, you know, it's our responsibility all the time as an organization to represent ourselves well and make sure that people understand how we can deliver value for them.

Chris Williams:

And I think, um, the book getting to yes, is this is a book with with a lot of valuable insights about principled negotiation. One of the things that I certainly say I see too much in sport and maybe too much everywhere, but but is is is sort, but definitely people can get away with it at times in sport is putting an unjustified valuation on things. In the world of sponsorship, for example, it's sometimes quite hard to articulate the precise value of something. So actually understanding principled negotiation and having some levers that you can pull in conversations and understanding the impact around that is is something that I found really, really valuable. So if I was speaking to someone who's starting out in sales, I'd tell them to give that book a read brilliant.

Charlie Reading:

I've not read gang to yes, so that's gonna go on the on the reading list. Matthew syed is one of my favorite authors. I love all of his stuff, but I think rebel ideas might actually be my favorite because of the diversity think of thinking and group think conversation. I think it's so powerful in business today. Um, do I agree? But my favorite recommendation absolutely is the alchemist, I think that is. I read that when I was traveling after university, when I had. I didn't want to go into farming but didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I read it and I then I recently read it, about six months ago, and I was only reading it six months ago that I realized how much of an impact it had all of that time ago, because it's just brilliant in terms of you know, finding your path and and I realized actually it was that book that convinced me not to go into farming and to take the random path into financial services, which proved to be reasonably successful.

Chris Williams:

So yeah, so you know, Charlie, I have to share this one because it's on my desk and I am picking through at the moment and it is genuinely full of if you wanted to think about things, that. So this is Simon Mundy's book and Simon Mundy's book is called Champion Thinking Get Out of your Own Way. Find your peak performance. I I honestly think the way that he, and the conversations he's had with people on his podcast as well. He is phenomenal at discussing the things that we start this conversation talking about. How do you actually find that kind of peak state and how do you make sure that you can almost block out noise and understanding principles of like flow and and that side of stuff.

Charlie Reading:

I find the conversations he's had with people are incredibly valuable brilliant, and I actually didn't know that he had a book out, so that's a. That's another one to add to the reading list. Fantastic, thank you. We always like to get the last guest to ask the next guest a question without knowing who that person is going to be. So our last guest was the amazing kurt Madden, who just finished his 50th Ironman in Kona last year. And, yeah, just amazing guy. So, claire, I think you've got Kurt's question, haven't?

Claire Fudge:

you, yeah. So if you could run to the end of the red carpet and cross the finish line with a close friend or a loved one at Kona, the World Championships, who would you invite, and why?

Chris Williams:

Okay, at Kona, the world championships, who would you invite and why? Okay, the way the way that's question, the question, is worded, makes me feel that you're supposed to sort of think about some someone that you sort of someone aspirational to you or like a hero and or so on. But, like my, my, my instincts are definitely coming back to family here. I was going to say my brother, but I'm actually starting to think that that might mean that I've regressed too far with my fitness level, because I'm quite happy to be quicker than him. So I'm not going to say him I'd like to be there at the Maybe I finish and he's coming in a bit behind me. So that one. But no, it'll be my son, because that means I'm still going in quite a few years' time. He's only 16 months old. So, yeah, he's got a bit of training to do before he gets on the red carpet, I think. But yeah, to be able to sort of get there with Leo, my son. I think that would be my answer to that question about it.

Charlie Reading:

I think that's awesome. I think that's awesome because I hadn't really taken that. Of course, with an Ironman, you're not allowed to cross the finish line with anyone, so I hadn't really thought about the fact that it needed to have been somebody that had also raced. So, yes, I think that's a lovely. So the fact that you're doing your Ironman man and you're both in Kona at the World Championships, that would be awesome, wouldn't it? That would be seriously cool. You're gonna have to keep training pretty hard to keep up as your son just 16, 17 years of training yeah, you'll be

Chris Williams:

you'll be fine. Yeah, by then I might actually have some time back and I might be able to do some training yeah, good luck with that brilliant chris.

Charlie Reading:

It's been absolutely fascinating listen to you. I love the stories and also the understanding and and um, what super try doing. I think it's. I think it's great for the sport. I think what you, you know how you've brought your learnings from your previous experiences with other sport and the atlantic. I think it's fascinating and I think it's. I think you're absolutely right that the future of the sport needs these different sort of opportunities, and let's hope we do end up with the Netflix Unchained, because I think it's the revolution of the sports documentary, isn't it? And it's a wonderful thing.

Chris Williams:

Yeah, I think we'd see a lot of interesting stories unfold, just having been on the circuit. Look these athletes. It's funny, funny. They spend so much time with one another. They often train together and but they're fiercely competitive as well, and I think there's a lot of um, sub stories and subplots that that kind of emerge and, yeah, I think it'd be fascinating. So, yeah, let's watch this space I definitely agree.

Charlie Reading:

I think it's the stories behind the sport that would make it really fascinating, in the same way that the Unchained has done. Chris, where's the best place for people to find? Either follow you or find out more about Supertri.

Chris Williams:

Yeah, sure, I think we tend to be pretty active on LinkedIn, both Supertri and myself. I try and use that to connect with people who, anyone who's interested in learning more about what we're doing with Supertri. And, yeah, so you can find me me as Chris Williams on there and we are as Supertri there as well.

Charlie Reading:

Fantastic. Thank you very much and, yeah, let's look forward to an amazing year of.

Chris Williams:

Supertri ahead. Thank you so much, Charlie. Thank you, Claire. It's been great to connect with you guys.

Charlie Reading:

So what did you make of the interview with Chris?

Claire Fudge:

A great story into his world where he is now in in super try, um, and also I I think you know right at the very beginning where he was talking about the rowing in particular, one of the things that I really thought about that is how everybody learns something different from a story, um, and that you don't necessarily need to teach in a story that actually people take something from it. So, and that was a side point, but that really made me think actually. But yeah, I'm excited to learn more about Supertri as well, because it actually feels really exciting to be involved in that. What about you? What did you sort of really take from today's conversation?

Charlie Reading:

Well, the first thing I was going to touch on, which I took a slightly different take on, is the importance of stories. So how sport now is being told better through stories around what happens on the pitch or on the court, as opposed to necessarily what happens what you see in the live sport, and I think that it's really interesting, isn't it the live sport? And I think that that's it's really interesting, isn't it? And how, for a sport like triathlon and or cycling, that those stories become even more important. And I think he, the um, the last dance, the chicago bulls, one, is a perfect example in that, like he said, there's lots of people that absolutely fascinated, were absolutely fascinated by it, myself included, but that weren't that fascinated by basketball.

Charlie Reading:

And just understanding the stories of what goes on behind the scenes is so powerful, and I think you know that's a lesson that we can all take in business, isn't it? You know, if we could really get to the heart of the stories, um, you know they say that facts tell and stories sell. Well, you know, if you can get the stories of your business out there, it's so much um, so much more powerful, and I think they're doing that really well with um, uh, I think that that was the kind of point, and I think the super tri concept is also a great concept in that I can see they're making it very much, trying to make triathlon mainstream, which it needs to be. It's still what we still want the long course stuff and the and the crazy outlandish endurance stuff but I think there's definitely a place for that sort of mass participation kind of high, high, um, really easy, easily accessible piece. What are your thoughts around the sort of super tri format and how they're going about it?

Claire Fudge:

do you know, originally when I, when I thought of this, I suddenly thought, actually, the olympics, how the olympics have brought the relay triathlon in. That was firstly where my head went and I just thought actually, that made it very, very exciting to watch. And, having been in paris this year to watch it by super exciting to to see that. And also from a spectator point of view, um, and I think this is, I think you know this brings in, then, a level for everybody, doesn't it like? Not everybody has that aspiration to do something really long, but it also brings more interest, more money into the business again. Um, so I I think it, I think it is.

Claire Fudge:

You know, triathlon, I think, is changing and I think we will see more of this kind of excitement that people want. And also team, because you know very well, like training for triathlon, you train with your buddies and your friends, but essentially when you do a triathlon you are on your own, it's your race, even though you're around other people. So that kind of team format I think is is really exciting. I think one of the things I also thought as well was was around um, you know that, the T100 and the pro triathlon series and prize money and how that face of triathlon is is changing um. So that was really interesting. It just got me thinking a lot about the future for professionals and how they can make a career out of triathlon yeah, because ultimately, in in today's day and age, you've got to attract eyes, haven't you?

Charlie Reading:

and? And if you're attracting eyes and and let's be honest, you have to be fairly hardcore into your triathlon to find watching an iron man on you know on a live stream particularly interesting, and even if you are hardcore at your triathlon, to find watching an iron man on you know on a live stream particularly interesting, and even if you are hardcore at your triathlon, it's still quite often quite dull. And so a way of making triathlon more like, you know, gladiators is a way of making it consumable by the public, and that is then going to draw attention to people. Go, actually, I want to have a go at this, and then I want to. Personally, I want to race the Ironman, but I want to watch the Supertrike and that's, I think, the difference, isn't it? So I think it's interesting. I think from a business model, it's really. It's thought-provoking in the sense of how do people want to consume versus engage in your um, in whatever it is that you do? So I think that's, that's something that I got um from it.

Claire Fudge:

I think another thing is this, which again comes into business, and maybe how you're, you know you're marketing, how do you attract people? You know you were talking about the kind of stories and that people really need and want to. You know, hear, see, feel that emotion within a story, um, but also that that kind of idea that we don't have time. You know, we all know that actually, on social media now I can't remember what the stats are, but people like take however many seconds per post and that, hence why videos are becoming, you know more of what we, what we essentially should be doing, you know, this year and that kind of quick nature of, yes, it's not quick to train for that, but it's a race and it's over and it's done with. You know, is this where kind of people are kind of going as well, this kind of instantaneous?

Charlie Reading:

yeah, I don't, I don't say that I think that's right and I also think that we didn't. He sort of chris touched on it, but it's, how often can an athlete race? Well, if you're doing a super try, you can probably race every weekend. You're doing an ironman, you probably do four or five a year. You know that's, that's your lot, isn't it so so again, that leaves it open to much more kind of like a league structure like in football, as opposed to kind of three games a year, which is a totally different beast, isn't it? And I loved his book recommendations. I thought Alchemist. Have you ever read the Alchemist?

Claire Fudge:

So I have started to read it and it's just reminded me I need to actually go back and that's going to be one of my Audible downloads, if it's on Audible.

Charlie Reading:

It is on Audible. It is a lovely, lovely book and it's just like you're always listening to the story or reading the story, thinking it's just too simple. It feels like almost like a bit of a children's storybook, and yet the lessons within it are just brilliant, absolutely brilliant. So, um, so, yeah, if you haven't, for the listeners that haven't read it, yeah, I would definitely, I would definitely do that. And and actually, if you run a business, I think matthew syed's rebel ideas is a phenomenal book in terms of thinking about, thinking about your thinking, actually, you know, and group think and how you know, because people tend to want to recruit, recruit people like them, and yet actually that's the worst thing you can do from a diverse thinking point of view. So so, really good. So so, loads of really interesting takeaways. Um, and amazingly, we haven't really talked about his incredible adventure on the Atlantic, but, um, he took the lessons from that and applied them to everything else. So I think that's really interesting. So, keep up with your training, claire, and for everyone else, keep on training.